Comment on Burgess and Zerbe's "Appropriate Discounting for Benefit-Cost Analysis"
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Szabolcs Szekeres
This is a comment on a paper by David F. Burgess and Richard O. Zerbe. It derives a different set of conclusions than the cited authors do from the customary premises underlying benefit-cost analysis. It concludes that capital should be shadow priced, and that the appropriate discount rate to use in benefit-cost analysis is the interest rate of the capital market to which the public sector has access. It proposes that a plausible source of the great divergence in approaches to discounting stems from different answers being given to the question of whether present day consumption has a future consumption opportunity cost.
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Articles in the same Issue
- Article
- Risk Heterogeneity and the Value of Reducing Fatal Risks: Further Market-Based Evidence
- The Combination of Lab and Field Experiments for Benefit-Cost Analysis
- Benefit-Cost Analysis with Local Residents' Stated Preference Information: A Study of Non-Motorized Transport Investments in Pune, India
- Valuing the Benefit for Cancer Patients of Receiving Blood Transfusions at Home
- Principles and Standards
- Towards Principles and Standards for the Benefit-Cost Analysis of Safety
- Response or Comment
- Comment on Burgess and Zerbe: On Bank Market Power and the Social Discount Rate
- Comment on Burgess and Zerbe's "Appropriate Discounting for Benefit-Cost Analysis"
- Calculating the Social Opportunity Cost Discount Rate